Father Tom McNally prays with death-row inmate Eric Wrinkles at Indiana State Prison in Michigan City in December 2008. (CNS)

The
topic of capital punishment has become, in recent decades, a contentious and
increasingly confusing one among Catholics. Some Catholics insist the Church
has finallyand authoritativelyrenounced the death penalty. Some argue further
that the death penalty is no different than abortion or euthanasia, and that
supporting any of these acts rends the “seamless garment” of Church teaching
regarding the dignity and value of life. And not a few go so far as to say that
no one deserves the death penalty, for it is cruel and unusual punishment not
fit to be supported by Christians.

What,
then, to do with Scripture, which does not reject the death penalty, but
accepts itin the New and Old Testamentsas legitimate and necessary? Rulers,
St. Paul told the Romans, “are not a
terror to good conduct, but to bad.” The one who exercises proper political
authority is a servant of God who works for the good of citizens. “But if you
do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant
of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:3, 4). The Church
teaches that the State, wielding an authority granted by divine law and
grounded in natural law, is able to punish those who violate laws and inflict
damage on society. “It is the role of the state,” remarks the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “to
defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and
intermediate bodies” (par. 1910).

Pope Pius XII, in an address given September 14, 1952,
made a significant remark that is often quoted in debates about capital
punishment:

Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man,
the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. In this case it
is reserved to the public power to deprive the condemned person of the
enjoyment of life in expiation of his crime when, by his crime, he has already
disposed himself of his right to live. (“The Moral Limits of Medical Research
and Treatment,” an address given to the First
International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System, par. 33)

The
State, in other words, can carry out due punishment as an instrument of God,
yet a murderer is worthy of strong punishment regardless of whether or not he
is caught, tried, and convicted. As philosopher Michael Pakaluk has noted, if
only two people were left on earth, and one killed the other, the murderer
would still merit death for his action. Why? Because authentic justice is
rooted in objective truth about good and evil.

Three basic forms of justice

Justice
is traditionally defined as giving to each his proper due. In the Catholic
moral tradition there are three basic forms of justice, each addressing a basic
relationship within society. These are commutative justice, distributive
justice, and communal, or legal, justice. Commutative justice, the Catechism explains, “regulates exchanges
between persons and between institutions in accordance with a strict respect
for their rights.” This has to do primarily the relationship between
individuals. Distributive justice “regulates what the community owes its
citizens in proportion to their contributions and needs.” This has to do with
how the social whole relates to individuals. And the third, communal justice, “concerns
what the citizen owes in fairness to the community,” that is, what is due to
the social whole on the part of each person (pars. 2411-12).

A
grave crime, such as murder, is a direct violation of communal, or legal,
justice. Such an act requires a responsean act of retributive justiceon the
part of society. Moral theologian Dr. Mark Lowery, in his book, Living the Good Life: What Every Catholic
Needs to Know About Moral Issues (Servant, 2003), writes, “First, the State
has the duty to exercise retributive justice. Most people today confuse
retributive justice with vengeance.” He observes that while vengeance is the
passion that desires revenge“to get back” at another personretributive
justice is an objective “balancing of the scales” of justice (p. 194). Guilt
requires punishment in proportion to the seriousness of the offense.
Traditionally, Christianity (and other religions) has regarded death as the
proportionate punishment for the willful taking of innocent life.

This
understanding of retribution and justice is expounded in the Catechism in a paragraph worth reading
in its entirety:

The efforts of the state to curb the
spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil
society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good.
Legitimate public authority has the right and the duty to inflict punishment
proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of
redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly
accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment
then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has
a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction
of the guilty party. (par. 2266)

The
late Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote an important essay,
“Catholicism & Capital Punishment” (First
Things, April 2001), in which he statedechoing the Catechism“The purpose of punishment in secular courts is fourfold:
the rehabilitation of the criminal, the protection of society from the
criminal, the deterrence of other potential criminals, and retributive
justice.” He then emphasized this key point: “Just retribution, which seeks to
establish the right order of things, should not be confused with vindictiveness,
which is reprehensible.”

Pope John
Paul II and capital punishment

Which brings us to Pope John Paul II, whose remarks on
the death penalty in his encyclical, Evangelium
Vitae“The Gospel of Life” (March 1995)have been instrumental in bringing
about a serious reexamination of the issue.

John Paul II, in the opening paragraphs of Evangelium Vitae, wrote of a “climate of
widespread moral uncertainty” and observed that “we are confronted by an even
larger reality, which can be described as a veritable structure of sin. This
reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity
and in many cases takes the form of a veritable ‘culture of death’” (par. 12).
He especially pinpointed (drawing on Gaudium
et Spes, the Vatican II document on the Church and the modern world)
murder, genocide, abortion, and euthanasia as core evils of this culture,
lamenting that not only are the unborn and aging under deadly attack, but “conscience
itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it
increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns
the basic value of human life” (par. 4).

This is significant because John Paul II’s argument is
not that the death penalty is objectively evil (like abortion, euthanasia,
murder, etc.). Rather, modern, liberal societies have largely rejected
objective truth, a commitment to protecting human dignity, an appreciation of
natural law, and even a traditional understanding of the State. This makes it
nearly impossible to carry out the death penalty in a manner properly attuned
to justice and exhibiting moral rectitude. He wrote:

Faced with the progressive weakening in individual consciences and
in society of the sense of the absolute and grave moral illicitness of the
direct taking of all innocent human life, especially at its beginning and at
its end, the Church’s Magisterium has spoken out with increasing frequency in
defense of the sacredness and inviolability of human life. (EV, par. 57)

How
can the State that ignores the clear voice of natural law regarding the killing
of unborn babies go about executing criminals when such an act of retributive
justice is itself squarely rooted in natural law? There is a sort of moral
schizophrenia at work here. “If the State,” argues Lowery, “has the right from
God to use the death penalty, it certainly does not have the duty. When to use
and not to use is a prudential decision. … Pope John Paul II, without
repudiating the traditional Catholic position [regarding the death penalty],
argues similarly that in a ‘culture of death’ we must find other means,
bloodless means, of retributive justice” (pp. 200, 201).

Thus,
John Paul II asserted that modern societies have the material means to contain
and punish criminals without resorting to the death penalty. He readily
acknowledged, in keeping with traditional Catholic teaching, that, “Public
authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing
on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime.” But he argued there is
not a need to “go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of
absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to
defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the
organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically
non-existent” (EV, par. 57; see CCC 2267).

A delicate and challenging balance

Has
the Church, then, condemned the death penalty? Does she view capital punishment
as the moral equal to abortion? In short, “No, she has not.” The Catechism states, “Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and
responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the
Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only
possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor”
(CCC, par. 2267). Contrast that with what it says about abortion, which is an
objective moral evil that is, in every situation, “gravely contrary to the
moral law” (par. 2271).

In
1980, the Catholic bishops of the United States issued a statement on capital
punishment. “Catholic teaching,” they stated, “has accepted the principle that
the state has the right to take the life of a person guilty of an extremely
serious crime, and that the state may take appropriate measures to protect
itself and its citizens from grave harm.” They then wrote, “nevertheless, the
question for judgment and decision today is whether capital punishment is
justifiable under present circumstances.” That question is still open for
discussion and debate, in part because of the complexity of “present
circumstances.”

One
difficulty, for example, is that convicted murderers sometimes get released
after serving time in prison; in certain cases, they commit murder or violent
crime after their release. In such cases, has the State properly fulfilled its
obligation to protect its citizens from harm? Has society effectively defended
innocent lives in such situations? Is this a matter of lacking means, or of lacking
the will to rightly employ the means available?

These
and other challenging questions cannot, of course, be taken lightly or answered
glibly. They cannot be addressed in haste or out of vindictive anger. Catholics
of good will should always consider these matters of life and death with a
basic grounding in Church teaching about natural law, justice, the role of the
State, and the respect due to every life.

[Editor’s note: This essay originally appeared
in a slightly different form in The
Catholic Answer magazine.]

Carl E. Olson is editor of Catholic World Report and Ignatius Insight. He is the author of Will Catholics Be "Left Behind" (Ignatius), co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax (Ignatius), and author of the "Catholicism" and "Priest Prophet King" Study Guides for Word on Fire. He is also a contributor to "Our Sunday Visitor" newspaper, "The Catholic Answer" magazine, and other publications. In his spare time, he collects books and music, plays tennis, and helps edit Progarchy.com.

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